


The Maid of Orléans

by keerawa



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angels, Character of Faith, Deathfic, Gen, Historical, Martyrdom, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-14
Updated: 2010-04-14
Packaged: 2017-10-18 06:24:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/185946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keerawa/pseuds/keerawa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gabriel is sent to Joan when she is 16, to prepare the girl to fulfill her destiny.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Maid of Orléans

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [](http://spnland.livejournal.com/profile)[**spnland**](http://spnland.livejournal.com/) 'Prank War 2010' writing contest, although it ended up wandering off the prompt. I always wondered how an Archangel might become a trickster.
> 
> Interestingly enough, every one of Joan's potential endings here is one that she is reported to have had a near-miss with, in reality.

Joan was first visited by angels at the age of twelve. Their voices were so beautiful, she later told the theological examiners, that she cried when they left her.

The Archangel Gabriel is the Messenger of Man’s Salvation; God had chosen him to proclaim the good news to Mary. His precise control of time is unique among his brethren, as is his ability to understand and communicate with humans. He is sent to Joan when she is sixteen, to prepare the girl to fulfill her destiny.

Gabriel shows Joan her future. The illiterate peasant girl will lead her nation’s army to victory, a triumph of faith over reason. And she will die at the age of seventeen, smashed by a cannonball as she scales a ladder in Jargeau. *snap*

Another future, a new set of choices. Joan dies of wound fever after liberating Orléans. She is only eighteen years old. *snap*

Another future, and Joan dies under torture by the Inquisition at the age of nineteen. *snap*

Again Joan throws herself into battle, and dies of an arrow wound to the neck at les Tourelles. This time, she is eighteen. *snap*

Joan is raped and murdered in prison by English soldiers when she is nineteen years old. *snap*

Joan once again dons the garments of a man in her tent and prepares for battle. The Archangel Gabriel appears to her, kneeling as he had before Mary.

“You know how this ends. Why don’t you just … walk away?” he begs her. “Go live your life. Marry, raise a family. You have a choice. You could be happy.”

Joan, rosy-cheeked and exalted, clasps his hands between hers and brushes her lips across his forehead. “Because this is God’s plan,” she says, as if that were all the answer required.

And it is. Infinite timelines, and in every one Joan of Arc dies a martyr’s death. Gabriel pushes his senses further.

In every future he sees the apocalypse. A battle between two brothers, on Earth as it was in Heaven. Mankind dies in terrible plagues, in the bright flash of a nuclear blast, clawing and biting at each other in a frenzied need for slaughter, in rivers of fire, in a never-ending winter. God’s plan is revealed to Gabriel in the rattle of the final mortal breath.

Joan of Arc was burned at the stake when she was nineteen years old. Someone watched from the crowd until the last echoes of her screams died away. The being that walked away was no longer Archangel Gabriel.


End file.
